New CMS Change Request for Home Health and Hospice

Starting October 1, 2012, home health and hospice agencies will be required to use occurrence code 55 to indicate a date of death on claims.

The Occurrence code 55 and the date of death must be present when the following patient discharge status codes are used:

 20 (expired) Home Health Only

 40 (expired at home)

 41 (expired in a medical facility)

 42 (expired – place unknown)

Medicare will implement claims edits to ensure that occurrence code 55 is present in the above scenarios with dates of service on or after Oct 1, 2012. Download the CMS Transimittal Change Request 2410 below to read the full change request.